


the law of a few unreasonable moments

by statusquo_ergo



Series: a fire in the sage's mansion [3]
Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fake Marriage, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 03:26:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14228133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/statusquo_ergo
Summary: Mike never imagined that such an impulsive lie could lead to such...challenging consequences.





	the law of a few unreasonable moments

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: I wish you would write a fic where... Mike and Harvey end up in some sort of peril, and their best way out is a peculiar legal loophole. They should be safe... as long as they get married. (And then the fake marriage becomes a real marriage and they fall in love and live happily ever after!)
> 
> This fic begins sometime time during “[Exposure](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s04e08)” (s04e08).

“Where is he?”

The receptionist’s chair jerks back about an inch across the floor as the poor guy startles at Mike’s tone; to be fair, Mike certainly _feels_ like he’s about to start knocking down anyone who stands in his way, and he probably sounds at least twice as murderous, but he’s always had the impression that hospital staff were inherently used to that kind of thing.

“Where’s who?” the receptionist asks warily.

“Harvey Specter,” Mike grinds out, “there’s a patient around here somewhere named Harvey Specter, where is he? What room?”

The receptionist glances to a woman seated at his left who seems utterly unwilling to help him out, and Mike thumps his hand down on the counter.

“Where is he?”

“Sir,” the guy says edgily, “I can’t give out confidential patient information.”

Gritting his teeth, Mike locks eyes with him and leans forward over the counter until the edge of it presses into his ribs.

“I’m only going to ask you one more time,” he seethes. “Where. Is. Harvey Specter.”

“Are uh, are you a friend or a family member?”

Mike scowls. “What?”

“Um,” the guy fumbles, “patient information can only be released to immediate family members, are, are you his—uh, a family member?”

“Am I—” Mike shakes his head and stands up straight. “Look, just tell me where he is.”

Pursing his lips a bit, the guy shifts in his chair, getting a deductive look in his eye that Mike doesn’t particularly trust.

“Are you his husband?”

What the fuck?

Narrowing his eyes, Mike braces his hands on the counter and leans in again. “Yes,” he snaps, because of course this asshole won’t believe him, but if it gets him to Harvey faster, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t care. “Now where is he?”

The guy smiles pridefully and Mike does his very best not to haul back and clock him across the face.

“Room ten twenty-six,” he says. “Mister Specter was admitted in an unconscious state with a minor head wound, and he was treated by Doctor Cossa, and you can sign this release form if you’d like to take him home.”

That worked? That actually _worked?_

Barely refraining from going off on the guy for his arrogant lack of thoroughness, Mike skims the HIPAA waver in front of his face and scribbles his signature on the dotted line, shoving off the counter to storm down the hall. Is he Harvey’s _husband,_ who the fuck asks something like that?

Ten twenty-two, ten twenty-four…ten twenty-six. Bracing himself for the sight of Harvey lying unconscious in a sterile plastic bed and surrounded by the piercing trill of life support machines, Mike takes a breath and shoves the door open.

“Mike?”

Oh thank god.

Harvey isn’t even under the covers; in fact, he’s standing by a bed, slightly ruffled from where he must have been sitting on it a moment ago, with merely a tiny butterfly bandage on his forehead and a thoroughly disgruntled expression on his face.

“What are you doing here?”

“Harvey,” Mike breathes, stepping forward as Harvey continues to frown. “I got a call that you’d been rushed to the ER, they wouldn’t tell me anything else over the phone, but I got here as soon as I could, god, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Harvey mutters, smoothing down his sleeves. “I just want to get out of here.”

“What happened?”

“Anemia,” Harvey brushes him off. “Doctor says I need more iron in my diet, how about we stop by the steakhouse across the street?”

“Anemia?” Mike presses. “You’re not anemic, Harvey, what happened?”

“It’s nothing,” Harvey insists. “I took some medication I haven’t taken in awhile, I forgot how dizzy it makes me when I stand up, I fainted, must’ve hit my head on the way down, no big deal. Come on, let’s get going, I’m sure they’re going to make me file some kind of paperwork.”

That’s definitely not all there is to that conversation, but for the moment, Mike merely holds the door open as Harvey walks toward him. “I signed you out,” he says.

His step stuttering, Harvey fixes him with a piercing stare.

“How?”

Mike shrugs, following him down the hall. “The guy asked me if we were family, I said yes.”

“You said _yes?_ ” Harvey repeats, walking faster; Mike has to jog a couple of steps to catch him on his way out the front doors.

“Yes?”

Harvey pinches the bridge of his nose. “What specifically did he ask you?”

“Uh.” Mike sticks his hands into his pockets to keep from fidgeting. “He said, ‘Are you a friend or a family member,’ and I might’ve snapped at him a little, and then he said ‘Are you his husband,’ and I was like, yeah, sure, and he gave me the release form and I went and got you and…here we are?”

For a second, Mike is afraid Harvey might faint again for reasons entirely separate from medication-induced lightheadedness.

“Mike.”

He’s about to be fired, isn’t he? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Well, they had a nice run; it was fun while it lasted. The only question still remaining is whether Harvey is just going to fire him, or fire him _and_ kill him.

Mike winces.

“Uh-huh?”

Harvey sighs.

“Mike, it’s a crime to lie on a legal document.”

Say what now?

“I know that,” Mike ventures. “It’s also a crime to practice law without a license.”

“Mike, the hospital could sue you.”

Mike balks. “You’ve barely got a scratch! You don’t even have a concussion, there’s no way they could’ve kept you there!”

“It’s not about that,” Harvey says patiently, with a strong undercurrent of explaining something agonizingly simple to somebody insufferably dense. “It’s about the fact that I was admitted unconscious, with a head wound, and the fact that actually I do have a minor concussion, and I bet you the doctors wouldn’t be too happy to find out they’d just released me into the custody of someone who’s not a relative, and who hasn’t spoken to any actual doctors about my condition. It’s about the fact that we don’t know if someone’s looking for an excuse to fire that receptionist, because this is a perfect one that you’ve just handed them. It’s about breaking somebody else’s rules that I can’t hide and sweep under the rug for you.”

“For you too,” Mike mutters, regretting the words even as he’s saying them. Harvey sighs again.

“I’m going to ignore that,” he says, “and we’re going to fix this right now.”

Mike bites his lip nervously.

“How?”

“We’re going down to City Hall.”

Mike lags a bit behind Harvey.

“Why?”

“Well, if we’re married,” Harvey reasons, “don’t you think it ought to be on the record?”

On the _what?_

“We’re going to go get _married?_ ” Mike sputters. “Like really, actually married?”

Harvey arches his eyebrows sardonically. “You’d rather that receptionist sue you after he gets fired for providing a patient’s medical information to an unrelated party?”

“But I said I was your _husband,_ ” Mike points out as they reach the street corner, where Ray stands beside the Lexus as though he’s been expecting the two of them. “If we get married now, they’ll see the date on the marriage license, he’ll still be in trouble.”

“And you’ll still be on the hook for providing false information.”

“And he’ll lose his job!”

Harvey shakes his head as Ray opens the car door. “You put your priorities in whatever order you want, let’s just get this taken care of. As soon as we leave the registry, call Lola.”

Mike narrows his eyes. “Lola Jensen?”

“No, Lola Bunny,” Harvey deadpans. “Of course Lola Jensen. Tell her to keep an eye out for the license being electronically filed so she can backdate it. Tell her to give it an extra month, that ought to be plenty.”

“But they’ll have a paper copy,” Mike points out. “At the clerk’s office, and if the digital copy is different—”

“Vanessa will take care of that,” Harvey dismisses. “Or Donna, I think she’d have fun with something like this.”

Mike nods slowly, and Harvey pushes him toward the car.

Ray closes the door behind them and climbs into the driver’s seat.

“City Hall,” Harvey directs, as though there’s nothing to it. Mike buckles his seatbelt and looks out the window.

The silence doesn’t last too long.

“Look,” Harvey says, leaning over when Mike turns to him. “I know this isn’t the ideal situation, alright? But I’m not going to demand anything from you, I’m not going to make you _act_ like you’re married to me. You can keep dating Rachel, or whatever you two are doing, I won’t stand in your way. This is just about the paperwork.”

Mike coughs a wry laugh. “I don’t know what Rachel and I are doing.”

Harvey resettles in his seat. “Because of Logan?” he asks. Then, when Mike nods his confirmation: “You two still haven’t made up?”

“No. I’m not sure I want to,” Mike admits. “I know you said we should, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot, but I haven’t exactly landed on a solution yet that I’ve been able to stick with for more than half an hour.”

“Hm.”

The hum of the car motor fills the space between them for a few minutes.

Mike draws his fingertips across the seat leather.

“What was the medication?”

“Huh?”

Mike gestures vaguely in Harvey’s direction. “You said you took some medication you haven’t taken in awhile, that’s why you fainted. What was the medication?”

Harvey smirks. “You don’t think that’s a little personal?”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Mike says, turning his gaze to the back of the seat in front of him. “It’s just I didn’t know you were taking anything, I didn’t know you were sick.”

“I’m not sick.”

“Good.” Mike nods, but hardly a moment goes by before his eyes narrow and his mouth falls open incredulously as a memory comes crashing to the fore of his mind. “Hang on, did you say you have a concussion? And you’re going to spend the night at home? Alone?”

“I’ll have Donna stay with me.”

“But—”

“Mike.” Harvey turns to him with a stony glare. “I’ll handle it.”

Sunlight glints off the East River, and a minivan honks at a bicyclist, who swerves into the bus lane.

“Zoloft,” Harvey says. Mike looks at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Okay.”

“That’s what I was taking. Not because you came to me about Rachel,” Harvey clarifies, even though Mike didn’t ask. “It’s all the shit with Cahill and Sanders, and Forstman, and everything’s such a mess right now, I just needed a little help.”

Mike sets his hands in his lap.

“Thanks for telling me.”

Harvey nods, satisfied with his explanation, and Mike looks out the window again.

They must be nearly to City Hall by now.

“I’m sorry I dumped all that on you,” Mike says. “The other night, after Rachel told me what happened with Logan. I know you’ve been under a lot of stress, I shouldn’t have been venting my personal shit at you.”

“Better than keeping it all to yourself,” Harvey replies. “Don’t worry about it. I’m glad I could help.”

Mike hums.

\---

It’s been one hell of a day.

Sitting in his living room with his back to the door, hunched over his cell phone and scrolling mindlessly through junk emails and a potentially obsolete group chat with Harvey and Jessica about the whole situation with Cahill, Mike tries his best to turn his brain off, just for a minute. His eyes even go a little out of focus, which is fine, seeing as how he already knows what’s in the group chat and he’s pretty sure none of it is particularly helpful.

Then he catches sight of his bare ring finger, which he’s seen a million times before without regard for any particular thoughts, but this time fills him with a certain melancholy that he can tell will take more time than he’s got to spare at the moment to dissect completely.

A knock at the door rouses him from his stupor.

“Rachel,” he stutters when she looks up at him aseptically. “What are you doing here? I told you I needed some time.”

“And then you told me that you needed to get that image out of your head,” she replies in that authoritative tone of hers that means she thinks she knows better than him, and makes him clench his jaw.

“Which is why I need—”

“No,” she interrupts, and there must be a better way to go about this, there must. “No, it isn’t. Because you will never completely get it out of your head.”

Mike clenches his teeth. Tess. This is about Tess. This is about a situation with completely different parameters, completely different circumstances, and she’s dragging them together as though they’re mirror images.

“What do you want from me, Rachel?”

She looks up at him with her eyes clear and her nostrils slightly flared, ready and set to present him with her ultimatum:

“I want you to decide if you love me more than you hate the mistake I made. And if you don’t, then I want you to tell me that it’s over. And if you do, then I want you to come home.”

The timing of all this couldn’t _possibly_ be worse.

Mike sighs frustratedly. “Look, Rachel,” he begins, wondering how much he can get away with not telling her. “You can’t just come over and give me that kind of ultimatum, okay? I can’t just say everything is okay if we pretend it never happened, I can’t just pick up and get on with my life when I don’t even know why you did it. For god’s sake, Rachel,” he thumps his fist down on the door frame and looks to a point above her head, “you know how I feel about him, you had to know how this would make me feel; if you would do something like this with _him,_ how can I— I, I honestly don’t feel like I can be sure it’ll never happen again with someone else!”

He wonders if he should feel bad for not mentioning that he’s just gotten married, but that’s really more of a bureaucratic matter of course than actually cheating, so it’s probably okay. Mike elects to ignore what that says about the state of their relationship as Rachel lowers her brow, her lips parting in disbelief.

“Are you saying you don’t trust me when I’m telling you it won’t?”

“I never thought I had any reason to suspect it would happen in the first place,” he parries, “but here we are.”

Boy was that the wrong thing to say. Rachel glares up at him practically overflowing with spite, and he’s reasonably certain that if she had the ability, or the foresight to bring a lighter, she would very much prefer to set him on fire.

“Yeah,” she grumbles. “Okay.”

“Rachel, I don’t—”

“You don’t what, Mike?” she cuts him off. “You don’t want me to get the wrong impression? You don’t want me to read too much into things? You don’t want me to be mad at you?”

“I don’t want any of that,” he says, “but I mean… This is starting to seem like a trend with us, isn’t it?”

She narrows her eyes. “What?”

He wrings his hand awkwardly in the air between them. “Cheating. Cheating and then telling ourselves that it didn’t mean anything because we love each other more than anyone else, so whatever we did was…fine. No big deal.”

Turning away, she closes her eyes, and he wonders if she’s trying not to cry.

“Mike…”

“I do love you, Rachel,” he assures her, because he’s pretty sure he still does, in a way, “but I don’t want to be in a relationship like that, where I’m always a little bit suspicious, or feeling like I should be.”

She smiles to herself, and he wonders if she saw this coming. “So you’re not coming home.”

He sighs. “I don’t think I am.”

Biting her lip, she shakes her head, and Mike gets the sense that she wants him to feel bad for her, although he isn’t quite sure why.

“Fine,” she says, a little choked up. “Fine. You can pick your stuff up whenever.”

It doesn’t exactly seem fair that Rachel’s keeping the apartment, given that the only reason they’re living there at all is that Mike’s grandmother died before he could give it to her, but this probably isn’t the time or the place to get into that debate.

“I’ll see you at work,” he says.

She holds her head up high and walks away.

After a few seconds, he shuts the door.

\---

Resting his elbows on his desk, pressing his forehead down into his palms, Mike reads over Cahill’s deposition of him and Harvey for the umpteenth time, searching vainly for the loophole he already knows isn’t there. Cahill works for the goddamn SEC, he’s not going to be careless with something like that. Especially if there’s a chance that whatever he uncovers will take down Harvey Specter.

Come to think of it, it does look pretty suspicious that Mike was able to escape his contract at Sidwell right after the Gillis takeover. Not to mention the fact that he was almost immediately rehired at Pearson Specter, as though the job had been waiting for him; come to think of _that,_ is it possible the job _was_ waiting for him? Has Harvey been orchestrating this whole thing from the start? No, for that to be true, Harvey would’ve had to know Mike was going to be arrested; he would’ve had to ensure it, and he wouldn’t do something like that, not even if the ends justified the means.

But…would he, though?

Mike scrubs his hands through his hair and drops his head down on his keyboard.

He’s losing his goddamn mind.

\---

“Mike.” Harvey swings his office door open and leans in. “How’s it…”

Mike looks up from the mess of documents and file folders strewn all across his desk and piling up on the floor, and Harvey clears his throat awkwardly.

“How’s it coming?”

Doing his best to smile like he means it, Mike pats the files around him in an arbitrary order.

“Awesome,” he says. “It’s great. I think I’m gonna stay here overnight, just to make sure I’ve got everything, but it’s going really, really awesome.”

Harvey frowns like he doesn’t believe a word Mike’s saying.

“Do you have _anything?_ ”

“Actually,” Mike scrambles for a particular document he could’ve sworn he left somewhere he’d remember it, “yes, kind of. There’s a senator here who was part of the group that appointed Woodall head of the SEC, and Forstman made some pretty major donations to his campaign, which, I know that doesn’t mean anything by itself, but I’m looking for records that he did the same thing with the other two senators and then all we’d need is access to Forstman’s bank records to prove that he was the one behind Woodall’s appointment and I know _that_ doesn’t necessarily mean anything by itself but if we could prove he’s been lying about it then I think that would look pretty shady to some of other SEC employees who’ve been looking at us the wrong way and maybe if we confront him with it then Cahill will drop the case against the firm.”

Harvey eyes him curiously as Mike wraps up his explanation and begins to pant a bit.

“That’s…good work,” Harvey hedges. “Don’t stay here all night, okay, go home and get some rest.”

“Are you saying that as my husband or my boss?”

Mike immediately wishes he hadn’t asked that, and if Harvey’s frigid stare is any indication, he’s wishing approximately the same.

“Go home,” Harvey commands. “Right now, go home, eat something, and go to bed. I don’t want to see you back here before eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”

Mike huffs a petulant sigh, and Harvey raises his eyebrows as though Mike’s just proved his point.

The door swings shut, and Mike wonders where his messenger bag is buried under all this crap.

\---

“I know this won’t come as much of a surprise,” Harvey advises, approaching Mike as he waits for the elevator to arrive, “but after the mess with Forstman and the embezzlement, Jessica’s planning to fire Louis.”

Mike nods.

“Huh.”

Harvey watches Mike expectantly, becoming gradually more bemused by his lack of response.

“Bummer,” Mike offers.

The elevator arrives without fanfare, and although he doesn’t even know where Mike is going, Harvey follows him onboard.

“What is going on with you?” Harvey demands, as though he’s afraid they’ll be overheard in the empty carriage. “Is this about Sidwell? You think that since we hired you back, you have to work twenty-three hours a day or something to earn your keep?”

Mike shakes his head.

“I’m fine.”

“Like hell you are.” The indicator ticks down to the eighteenth floor and Harvey flexes his fists. “Is this about Rachel?”

Mike shrugs.

Harvey sighs.

“Look,” he says as the door opens into the lobby, “Mike, I wouldn’t be bringing this up, because your private life is your business, but your work over the last couple of weeks has started to suffer for it and that makes it _my_ business, so like it or not, we need to talk.”

“Can’t,” Mike replies. “I’m on my lunch break.”

“Perfect. Where are we going?”

Honestly, Mike hadn’t thought that far ahead, but he can’t imagine Harvey appreciating such a confession.

“Coffee cart,” he says offhandedly. Unfortunately, but also unsurprisingly, Harvey doesn’t appreciate that too much, either.

“Try again, rookie.”

“Juice Generation,” Mike says, naming the first place he sees that could be considered an eatery as they exit the building.

“It’s a wonder you’re able to stand under your own power with a diet like that,” Harvey grouses. “I’m taking you to Hillstone.”

Mike nods.

“Cool.”

Harvey grabs his arm and pulls him down the street; fortunately, the walk isn’t far. The restaurant is more or less around the corner, and they have cheeseburgers.

Mike lets himself be ushered to a small table against the wall and picks up his glass as soon as it’s full of water.

Harvey folds his hands on top of his menu and sets his shoulders back.

“Did Rachel find out?”

That would make things a lot easier. Or harder. Mike isn’t entirely sure, maybe both.

“No,” he mumbles.

Harvey sighs. “But it is about her, isn’t it?”

“No. Yes. Sort of.”

Mike has the sense that that’s the sort of sentence that should come out with wild tonal fluctuations, but he’s pretty sure he delivered all the words in the same key. It doesn’t surprise him that Harvey isn’t amused by the response, no matter what version of it came out; it’s not the most helpful of answers.

Fortunately, Harvey has the good sense not to push back.

Mike breathes out through his teeth.

“I know the marriage is a farce,” he begins, which puts a pained look on Harvey’s face that he can’t let himself become distracted by if they’re going to get through this. “It’s just that Rachel and I broke up right afterwards, and I couldn’t excuse myself by telling her that I was married—not that I would’ve,” he hurries to add at Harvey’s grimace, “but we broke up because of lies, and I was lying to her right then, and our relationship started with lies, and you and I work together based on a lie, and I keep lying even more to cover up all the lies, and I can’t help feeling like I’m lying about so much that I’ve got to get caught at some point _,_ and I won’t be able to get out of it because nothing in my life is completely, one hundred percent real.”

Harvey presses his lips together, sinking down into his shoulder blades and rubbing idly over his bare ring finger; Mike looks down despondently at the space between them, clenching his fist in his lap.

Their waiter sets down a wicker basket of bread and a porcelain dish of olive oil and makes a break for it.

“You’re right,” Harvey says eventually. “The marriage is a farce. We got into some legal trouble and we needed to get out of it fast. But Mike,” he leans forward just enough to prompt Mike to look up, “that doesn’t mean I’m not here for you. That’s real.”

Mike smiles wryly. “I don’t think that’s enough of a foundation.”

“You’re right,” Harvey agrees at once, “you’re absolutely right, and I’m not saying any of this as your husband, because I’ll be honest with you, I can’t say I’ve thought of us that way since it happened. It’s a technicality, not a…not a commitment. But I am saying it as your friend, and as someone who’s starting to feel responsible for whatever’s going on here.”

Bracing his hands on the edge of the table, Harvey leans back into his chair and holds Mike’s gaze intently.

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before now?”

Shrugging, Mike blinks as an excuse to avert his eyes to the floor beside him. “When Rachel and I broke up,” he confesses, “I felt like I was all alone, like I didn’t have anywhere I could go, or anyone I could talk to. She had been my… Not my rock, I guess, but my confidant, my partner, the person I could at least talk to about anything. Except then she told me about Logan, and I realized she wasn’t the person I thought she was. But like you said,” he disparages, “this is my personal life, it isn’t your business, it isn’t your problem, and I figured if I tried to talk to you about it, you’d, I don’t know, you’d figure out that I’m a total fuckup and kick me to the curb or something. You’d tell me to get my shit together and get over it.”

“Mike…”

He isn’t entirely sure what more Harvey is expecting him to say, but to be fair, Harvey doesn’t seem to know how he should continue his response, either.

Their waiter grabs the opportunity to ask them for their orders; Mike requests a cheeseburger, and Harvey doesn’t ask for anything.

As the waiter hurries off, Harvey picks his napkin up off his lap and sets it right back down.

“Mike,” he tries again. “I appreciate that, but I think we both know that you and I have never had the strictest relationship when it comes to keeping our private and professional lives separate. I never meant to make you think you didn’t have anywhere to turn with…all of this.”

“It’s not your fault Rachel and I split,” Mike assures him.

Harvey nods. “I know that. But—”

“Can I say one more thing?” Mike interrupts, letting a sudden burst of inspiration carry him on without waiting for Harvey’s approval: “You know how I said Rachel was my partner, she was my best friend, but she wasn’t my rock? She wasn’t my security, she wasn’t the person who made me feel safe. Like no matter what happened, I would always get through it, I would always come out of it alright, somehow. Not us as a couple, just, me as a person. That was always you, that’s been you as long as I’ve known you, but then all of a sudden I made this colossal mistake and you just—fixed it, like always, except now we’re married, and for some stupid reason I feel like now I can’t even talk to you anymore because I have no idea who you _are._ ”

Of all the ways he expected Harvey to respond, all the tracks he might take after such an announcement, such an admission, Mike is pretty sure it would have taken him a couple of years, at least, to land on the heartbreak that Harvey seems to be suffering at the moment. Raising his clenched fists back to the tabletop, Harvey lowers his brow, pursing his lips uncomfortably as his eyes dart back and forth across the place settings, and Mike feels like he should apologize for something, but he doesn’t know exactly what.

“I never meant for that to happen,” Harvey says finally, raising his eyes back to Mike’s face. “Mike, I care about you, I’ve always cared about you, and I never wanted you to think you couldn’t come to me for help anymore because of this dumb contract.”

“‘It’s not you, it’s me,’” Mike quips, but Harvey just shakes his head.

“I did all this because I was trying to protect you,” he swears, “and honestly, when you said you’d lied about being my husband, the most obvious thing was just to go ahead and get married, but there were probably other ways I could’ve handled that situation and I’m sorry I never even tried to think of what they were.”

Mike smiles thinly, his body suddenly feeling much heavier as he does his best to fight off the urge to close his eyes or curl up in his chair for a nap.

“It’s not your fault,” he says. “You didn’t know Rachel and I were going to break up, you had no reason to think I’d be reacting like this. That I’d be this…this spineless, this bad at separating fact and fiction.”

“I should’ve seen the breakup coming, at least,” Harvey counters. “Or at least been ready for it, I should’ve known that getting married was a terrible idea when your relationship was on the rocks like that. I feel like I doomed you before you even got a chance to talk it out.”

“No,” Mike denies, “no, Harvey, that had nothing to do with it. It was about me and Rachel, it was about us not being able to make the kind of commitment to each other that we both deserve to have from our partners.”

Harvey nods sagely.

“Hell,” Mike goes on a touch despondently, “you and I are more committed to each other than Rachel and I were.”

“Mike, I told you, just because we’re married doesn’t mean you can’t date whoever you want.”

“I don’t even mean just that,” Mike says as an idea begins to piece itself together in his mind. “Or just the fraud, or just—anything. Harvey, you’ve bailed me out of every stupid jam I’ve gotten myself into, you’ve had my back every time I’ve needed you; I’ve dropped everything for you just because you asked for my help, or you didn’t but I thought you needed it. Harvey, I think I’m more committed to you than I’ve ever been to anyone else my entire life.”

“Your grandmother,” Harvey reminds him, but Mike waves him off.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

Harvey smiles a tiny smile and drums his fingers on the table.

“I know.”

Fixing his sightline around Harvey’s shoulder, Mike does his best to steel himself for his next question, forcing it out before he loses his nerve:

“Have you ever thought about it?”

“Being committed to you?” Harvey asks. “It’s crossed my mind just about every day since I hired you.”

“I don’t mean committed to the fraud,” Mike clarifies. “I mean like…dating. You and me.”

Frowning, Harvey looks over his shoulder as though to check whether Mike’s burger is on its way. No such luck.

“Mike, you were just telling me how much you’re missing stability in your life,” he warns. “I’m not sure you know what you’d be getting into.”

“I was saying that _you’re_ my stability more than my _girlfriend_ was,” Mike corrects. “I’m saying that you’re one of the most important people in my life, and the idea of being married to you doesn’t exactly send me running for the hills, and I was just wondering if…maybe…”

Mike’s conviction begins to slip down a shallow slope with a steep cliff at the bottom, and Harvey merely watches him evenly.

Mike shakes his head.

“Forget it.”

“No,” Harvey says thoughtfully, “no, you’ve got a point.”

Mike stares at him. “I do?”

“Well,” Harvey speculates, “the idea of being married to you doesn’t seem to be sending me running for the hills, either, and I’m not going to deny that I’ve done an awful lot of stuff for you without even thinking about whether or not it was a very good idea.” He smiles winningly, and Mike tries to quash his thrumming nerves.

“Maybe dating is the next step.”

It’s far and away the least romantic relationship proposition Mike’s ever heard, but he has to admit there’s something awfully endearing about it.

“I guess marriage is off the table,” he says, which is a stupid joke, but at least Harvey doesn’t take it in bad taste.

“We’ll deal with that then,” he says. “Who knows; maybe a few years down the line, we’ll feel like renewing our vows. Maybe in front of a bigger crowd.”

Mike smiles fondly, and Harvey hides his own smile behind a drink of water.

“Um,” Mike wavers after a minute. “As your boyfriend slash husband, can I ask you a personal question?”

Harvey smirks and sets his glass down. “Is it something that would be easier to answer in the bedroom?”

“No seriously,” Mike says, doing his best to ignore the saucy implication of the quick retort. Harvey drops his teasing attitude immediately, tilting his head just slightly and making every effort to soften his demeanor.

“Of course.”

Mike bites his tongue and takes a breath.

“Was the Zoloft just about work?”

Harvey leans back thoughtfully in his chair and the restaurant continues to buzz and hum around them, the dwindling lunch rush providing just enough noise to drown out the silence but not so much that they can’t hear themselves think. That’s probably for the best; Harvey looks like he’s doing a lot of thinking at the moment.

Mike’s burger still hasn’t arrived, and he wonders if it’s too late to cancel.

Harvey straightens his back and rights his posture, resting his arms on the table in front of him.

“I don’t like seeing you unhappy.”

Clear on the other side of the room, a chair skids across the floor, and Mike smiles.

“Do me a favor,” he says, and Harvey nods readily.

“What?”

Mike glances away, just for a second.

“Don’t ask me to be perfect.”

As the words hang in the air between them, it occurs to Mike that his greatest fear is, in that very moment, that Harvey should dismiss the request as pointless, or asinine, or somehow offensively uncalled for. Of course, Harvey doesn’t do any of that, instead looking carefully into Mike’s eyes and doing his level best to understand where such a strange request might have come from, and why he might have made it.

Mike himself has a few ideas to explore.

It doesn’t matter; Harvey can get by with his own.

“Never,” he promises, and Mike smiles again.

It’s a nice feeling, when things are about to start getting better.

**Author's Note:**

> Harvey was rushed to [New York Presbyterian](https://www.nyp.org) at 425 East 61st Street; [New York City Hall](https://www1.nyc.gov) is in City Hall Park, which is roughly half an hour’s drive away.
> 
> When Mike says he knows what Harvey said (about Mike and Rachel), he’s is referring to when Harvey said that he admires what Mike has with Rachel because it’s real and hard to come by, and he thinks he should forgive her in order to keep her (“[We’re Done](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=suits&episode=s04e07)” [s04e07]).
> 
> The initial dialogue from Rachel’s confrontation with Mike at his apartment is lifted _almost_ verbatim from “Exposure” (s04e08), except I made the part about Rachel’s image of Tess and Mike having sex into Mike’s inner monologue and changed “hate what I did” into “hate the mistake I made” to compensate for what was eliminated.
> 
> [Hillstone](http://hillstonerestaurant.com/locations/nyc-midtown/) is a nice American-ish restaurant around the corner from 601 Lexington Avenue with no particular significance except for its closeness to Pearson Specter.


End file.
